Woody biomass for energy generation in vietnam

Given consumption trends in recent years, timberharvest from natural forest, scattered trees and plantation should reach 20-24 million m3/year by 2020 of which 10 million m3 should be “b

C ONTRACT N UMBER : AID-486-C-12-00008-00

WOODY BIOMASS FOR ENERGY GENERATION IN VIETNAM

FINAL REPORT

Submitted to United States Agency for International Development

Submitted by Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development

in partnership with SNV Netherlands Development Organisation

January 2014

This report is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) The contents are the responsibility of Winrock International and do not

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Thisstudy iscarriedoutintheframeworkoftheUSAIDVietnam Clean Energy Program by:

SNV Netherlands Development Organisation

Contact person: Dagmar Zwebe

Sector Leader Renewable Energy

6th Floor, Building B, La Thanh Hotel

218 Doi Can, Ba Dinh, Ha Noi

Vietnam

Email: Zwebe@snvworld.org

Phone: +84 (0) 1238163324

Report written by:

Nguyen Thi Thu Ha SNV Vietnam Renewable Energy Advisor

Nguyen Thanh Quang SNV Vietnam Renewable Energy Advisor

Dagmar Zwebe SNV Vietnam Sector Leader Renewable Energy

TABLE OF CONTENT

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS V

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1

2. WOODY BIOMASS EXPLOITATION IN VIETNAM 1

2.1 B ACKGROUND ON FOREST DEVELOPMENT 1

2.2 F OREST HARVESTING AND UTILIZATION 5

2.3 W OOD P ROCESSING S ECTOR D EMANDS AND S TATUS 8

2.4 W OODY BIOMASS DEVELOPMENT PLANS 9

3. ENERGY POTENTIAL AND USAGE OF WOOD RESIDUES 10

3.1 F OREST MANAGEMENT – RESIDUES AND POTENTIALS 12

3.2 E STIMATIONS OF THE AVAILABLE RESIDUES FROM THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR 13

4. FROM WOODY BIOMASS TO ENERGY CARRIERS 17

4.1 W OODCHIPS 18

4.2 W OOD P ELLETS 21

4.3 W OOD BRIQUETTES 25

4.4 C HARCOAL 27

4.5 O THER USES OF WOODY BIOMASS IN V IETNAM 29

5. UTILIZATION OF WOODY BIOMASS 31

5.1 H EAT GENERATION THROUGH COMBUSTION 31

5.2 P OWER GENERATION AND / OR CO - GENERATION THROUGH COMBUSTION 34

5.3 G ASIFICATION 35

6. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 36

REFERENCES 38

iv

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 The forest distribution in 2012 (MARD, 2013) _ 2 Table 2 The distribution of plantation forest areas in regions (ha) (VNFOREST, 2011) 4 Table 3 The natural forest timber harvesting (Vietnam Forestry handbook, MARD 2012, 2013) _ 7 Table 4 Forecast for Vietnam’s timber demand (MARD, 2006) _ 9 Table 5 Heating Values for several types of Woody Biomass (Residues) (Energy basic, fact sheet 5.8) 10 Table 6 Influence of wood moisture on calorific value (EnergyPedia, 2014) _ 11 Table 7 Heat value of different woody biomass material (Quynh, 2009) 11 Table 8 Forecasted energy potential generated from wood logging residues 13 Table 9 Forecasted residue to energy potential in sawing section 15 Table 10 Residues from Wood processing (IE, 2011) _ 16 Table 11 Energy potential from wood waste in the wood processing industry in Vietnam _ 17 Table 12 National wood chip technology manufacturers in Vietnam 19 Table 13 The structure of input material for wood chip production industry in 2011 (Forest trend, 2013) 20 Table 14 The distribution of woodchip production in Vietnam (Forest Trend, 2013) 21 Table 15 Woodchip suppliers and its capacityper organisation type (Forest Trends, 2013) 21 Table 16 Small Scale Woody Residues Pellet Machine Suppliers in Vietnam _ 22 Table 17 Production cost of biomass pellet (Cuong, 2013) _ 22 Table 18 The technical specification of a wood pellet producer in Vietnam _ 23 Table 19 Low heat value (LHV) of biomass pellets (Cuong, 2013) 23 Table 20 Several large woody pellet producers in Vietnam _ 24 Table 21 Production cost of biomass pellet/briquette (Cuong, 2012) 25 Table 22 The technical specification of a wood briquette in Vietnam 26 Table 23 Key properties of woody briquettes (Vietbioenergy website) 26 Table 24 An example of technical specification of charcoal in Vietnam from Artex ThangLong JSC 28 Table 25 Key parameters of charcoals 28 Table 26 MDF production in Vietnam 2012 29 Table 27 Fuel-wood demand, under different scenarios (Million tone) (FAO 2009) _ 30 Table 28 Pulp consumption, production and import of Vietnam during 2007-2011 30 Table 29 The Wood energy and wood waste available in Vietnam (Cuong, 2012) 31 Table 30 Several examples of typical woody biomass based heat generation projects in Vietnam 33 Table 31 Wood waste based boiler suppliers in Vietnam 33 Table 32 Woody biomass based power plants in Vietnam 34 Table 33 Gasification stove producers and developers in Vietnam 35 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 The forestry area and coverage in period of 2005 – 2012 2

Figure 2 The country forest standing stock (MARD, 2011) 3

Figure 3 Vietnam wood production output from plantation forest and nature forest (HAWA) 4

Figure 4 The forest coverage in Vietnam in 2010 4

Figure 5 The flow of wood from plantation forest and scatted trees in 2011 (Forest Trends 2013) 6

Figure 6 The sawn wood demand for furniture production in Vietnam (source MARD) 9

Figure 7 The balance material and energy used in wood processing industry in Vietnam (Worner, 2012) 14

Figure 8 Potential conversion steps from biomass to energy (carrier) 18

Figure 9 Design of a wood chipper from Qingdao Haylite Machinery Co Ltd.China 19

Figure 10 A sawdust briquette producing line in Viet Phat Bio Corp 26

Figure 11 Charcoal making kiln from coconut shell 27

Figure 12 Illustration of a biomass based steam generation system [Tin Thanh, 2010] 32

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

AIST Advanced Institute for Science and Technology

CDM Clean Development Mechanism

CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research

ECN Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands

ENERTEAM Energy Conservation Research and Development Center

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization

FBC Fluidized Bed Combustion

FSR Feasibility Study Report

GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit

HAWA Handicraft And Wood Industry Association

IE Vietnam Institute of Energy

IEA International Energy Agency

JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency

LEAP Long-term Energy Alternative Planning

MARD Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

MDF Medium Density Fiberboard

MOEJ The Ministry of the Environment of Japan

MOIT Ministry of Industry and Trade

NWFPs Non-Wood Forest Products

R&D Tech Center of Research and Development for Industrial Technology – Machinery

REED Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation

RIAM Vietnam Research Institute Agriculture Machinery

SFE State Forest Enterprises

SME Small and Medium Enterprises

SNV SNV Netherlands Development Organization

TBFRA Temperate and Boreal Forest Resources Assessment

TOE Ton of Oil Equivalent

USAID United Stated Agency for International Development

VCEP Vietnam Clean Energy Program

VIAEP Vietnam Institute of Agriculture Engineering and Postharvest Technology

VNFOREST Viet Nam Administration of Forestry

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1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

This study provides an overview of the opportunities of woody biomass (residues) for energy generation, including potential future use as well as an overview of the current use It is prepared as part of the USAID Vietnam Clean Energy Program, funded by the USAID, and with Winrock International as the main implementer

The main focus of the Vietnam Clean Energy Program, Sub-IR 2.3 is to increase public and private investment in and piloting of renewable energy technologies This is split into 3 focus areas:

 Result 2.3.1 Developers have economically viable renewable energy projects

 Result 2.3.2 Policy framework for renewable energy facilitates private sector investments

 Result 2.3.3 Off-grid poor communities gain access to renewable energy

Woody Biomass is a high potential source of energy for Vietnam Wood has several important advantages, mainly related to their characteristics and the fact that it can easily and with high efficiencies (in general) converted to energy, especially when we talk about wood residues as this is a renewable source Substantial amounts of wood residues (waste) are widely used by households and industries, meanly for cooking and heating on household level whereas industrial applications range from mineral processing, food and agro processing, metal processing, and textiles

Section 2 and Section 3 provide a general view on the woody biomass exploitation in Vietnam and the energy potential from forestry sector, it also gives an overview of local technology supply These two sections provide an insight into all form of wood residues which originated from forests harvesting activities (direct wood-fuels) and from other wood processing activities such as sawmills and timber manufactures (indirect wood-fuels)

Section 4 and 5 introduce the current wood energy conversion technologies and equipment used in Vietnam, ranging from densification technologies like pelletizing to large scale industrial use of woody biomass The woody biomass conversion technologies can be classified into three categories: traditional, state-of-the-art, and emerging technologies

2 WOODY BIOMASS EXPLOITATION IN VIETNAM

In this chapter background information will be provided, based on existing literature and interviews, on the forestry sector and developments in Vietnam There is no concistant data available on the forestry sector, and many different reports and sources give (sometimesslightly) different figures on forest sizes, wood collection from forest and other parameters For this report some key reports have been used, with similar data (but not identical), but in some cases there might be small differences between the data mentioned due

to the different sources (MARD, 2012), (MARD, Vietnam Forest Development Strategy, 2020), (FAO, 2009), (FAO, 2002), (SNV, 2012), (VN Forest, 2013) and (Forest Trend, 2013)

2006-2.1 Background on forest development

The forests in Vietnam varied over time, in 1943, Vietnam had 14.3 million hectare of forest area, with 43% of forest cover However, the forest area rapidly decreased in period of 1980

to 1990, losing 100,000 hectare annually, reducing to 9.18 million hectare in 1990 with a forest cover of only around 27% From 1990 onwards forest area and coverage has been increasing

as a result of the forest development strategy launched by MARD in 1995 in combination with

a large number of programs to protect forests and increase both the quantity and quality of forests throughout the country1 In 2006, forest area in Vietnam was 12,874 million ha (38% forest cover), of which 10.41 million ha were natural forest and 2,464 million ha were plantation forest According to the latest update of forestry in 2012 by MARD, there is almost

14 million hectare of land covered by forest (41% forest cover), which is mainly natural forest (over 10 million ha) The forest distribution has been indicated in table below

There are several definitions to label forest areas, it is defined by the situation that resemblances to the condition that would obtain in the complete absence of human intervention Forests and other wooded land are characterized as natural (undisturbed by man), semi-natural (under some degree of management, or evincing past human intervention)

or plantation (under active management) (TBFRA 2000)

T ABLE 1: T HE FOREST DISTRIBUTION IN 2012 (MARD, 2013)

Out of forest land (ha)

Subtotal (ha) Special-use

forest (ha)

Protective forest (ha)

Productive forest (ha)

1 Several large programs have been implemented including The Greening of Bare Land Program (Project 327, 1993-1998), the Five Million

Hectare Reforestation Program (1998-2010), the Forestry Extension Program, the National Action Plan for Biodiversity (1995, 2007), the

National Action Plan to combat desertification, 2006-2010 On a policy level; National Forestry Development Strategy 2006–2020, Forest

Protection and Development Law 2004, The Biodiversity Law 2008

2Vietnam categorises forests by designated use (Source: Circulation 34/2009/TT-BNNPTNT, 10 June 2009 of MARD.):

1 protection forest, reserved for watershed and soil protection, prevention of erosion and desertification, and environmental preservation;

2 special-use forest, designated mainly for natural area preservation, ecological diversity, germplasm conservation and scientific research; and

of plantation forest (MARD, 2011)

F IGURE 2: T HE COUNTRY FOREST STANDING STOCK (MARD, 2011)

The distribution of the plantation forest is show in the table below In the Central & Highlands and in Northeast, forest cover is high at over 40% In the Southeast forest cover is about 20% whereas in the Red River Delta and Mekong River Delta, most of the area is used for agriculture and forest cover is below 10% (VNFOREST, 2011) It is interesting to look deeper into the net rate of forest change, as indicated below in Box 1

B OX 1: N ET R ATE OF F OREST C HANGE 2000 - 2005

A 5-year net rate of forest change of almost zero

The REDD and Sustainable Development – Perspective from Viet Nam (SNV, 2010) report shows that the net rate of forest change in Viet Nam between 2000 and 2005 was relatively close to zero, acknowledging that there

is a large degree of variation throughout the country Forest cover changed significantly in parts of Viet Nam, even though increases in some places mask decreases in others when national averages are examined In some areas, forest loss was quite drastic between 2000 and 2005 For example, three provinces saw more than 50% of the forest cover they had in 2000 lost by 2005: An Giang saw its cover decline from 18.48% to 7.68% (a 58% loss), Tra Vinh from 15.16% to 7.04% (54% loss) Dong Thap from 18.17% to 8.74% (52% loss) Looking at districts, as would be expected from the low national deforestation rate, most have a relatively low net rate of forest change (around 0 on the plots below) However, some have quite pronounced rates of forest cover loss.

Vietnam plantation forest continued to increase in recent years, with an average of around 150,000-200,000 ha/year It is expected that with such an increase in plantation forest in Vietnam the timber supply for the wood processing industry and the wood chip industry will also continue to grow

2001 - 2005 (inventory)

Timber Volume Vietnam

Total timber volume (Mill.M3)

T ABLE 2: T HE DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTATION FOREST AREAS IN REGIONS ( HA )

* numbers are slightly different than in table 1 due to the use of different sources

Vietnam has established 128 special use forest areas covering 2,228,149 ha and accounting for 11.7% of the total forestry area or 6.7% of the total land area There are 30 national parks, 60 nature reserves and 38 landscape protection areas in the special use forest system

F IGURE 3: V IETNAM WOOD PRODUCTION OUTPUT FROM PLANTATION FOREST AND NATURE FOREST

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F IGURE 4: T HE FOREST COVERAGE IN V IETNAM IN 2010 (SNV)

2.2 Forest harvesting and utilization

Forest utilization is in line with forest management regulations under the Decision No 86/TTg

of the Government and following series of timber and forest products harvesting management regulations In 20 May 2011, MARD has issued the Circular No 35/2011/TT-BNNPTNT on guiding the implementation of timber and non-timber forest product harvesting and salvaging

Recently VNFOREST issued the Document No.98/TCLNSDR dated 10/2/2012 to direct provinces to strengthen their management of timber and timber product harvesting, especially the harvesting of natural forest timber The harvesting of plantation forest, processing, importing, and exporting of timber and timber products have been monitored and examined thought out country

Given consumption trends in recent years, timberharvest from natural forest, scattered trees and plantation should reach 20-24 million m3/year by 2020 (of which 10 million m3 should be

“big” timber).To achieve adequate supply to the high demand of the wood processing industry,

it will be necessary to improve forest plantation productivity to average more than 15

m3/ha/year Natural forest growth will be 2-5 m3/ha/year depending on forest status (FAO 2009)

Harvesting from plantation forests

Vietnam has almost 3.5 million ha of plantation forest (MARD, 2011), of which about 75% is productive forest This can provide approximately 14.8 million m3 of timber In addition, scattered timber and garden trees is also very large, estimated about 2.5 million m3 per year Total production of timber from plantations and gardens households estimated 17.3 million m3

in 2011, that is not including about 2 million m3 of wood from the rubber tree disposal (VNFOREST 2013)

According to estimates, about 63 % of the total amount of timber harvested from plantation forests are being processed woodchips that are entirely exported to China, Korea, Japan,…to

be used for paper production The remaining 37 % of total timber harvested go directly to the pulp and paper, artificial boards, furniture production and construction or fuel-wood as domestic uses (VNFOREST 2012) The structure of plantation forest timber distribution in the have been given in the figure below

F IGURE 5: T HE FLOW OF WOOD FROM PLANTATION FOREST AND SCATTED TREES IN 2011

(F OREST T RENDS 2013)

Natural forest

The State Forest Enterprises (SFE) manages about 26% of the natural forest for timber production Conventional loggings are carried out by SFE or logging contractors Intensive logging happened in the period from 1976 to 1980 with 1.62 million m3 /year, many forest areas have been degraded and the non-commercial crops trees are left in the forest influencing the biodiversity However, the amount of timber being harvested from the natural forest has considerably reduced over the last few years, for example, from 1.2 million m3 in 1992, to 450,000 m3 in 1996-1997 and 300,000 m3 in 2001-2002 From 2005 up to date, the natural

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forest logging are set down to 200,000 m3/year The changes in the natural forest harvesting are given in the table below

T ABLE 3: T HE NATURAL FOREST TIMBER HARVESTING

(V IETNAM F ORESTRY HANDBOOK , MARD 2012, 2013)

Wood from natural forest is large (diameter of imported wood is from 25 cm to 60cm) which

is usually used for making handicraft, furniture and outdoor furniture Wood from natural forests is the major raw materials for these products, taking a high proportion of structural material of wood processing industry Vietnam is the second-largest furniture exporter in Asia, after China, mainly exporting to the US and the EU The trade is one of the country's top five export products in monetary value (worth $2.4 billion a year) Currently, wood demand from natural forests is very high, while domestic materials only meet 20% of demand, the remaining

of 80% must be imported In 2009, Vietnam had to import 4 million m3 for the wood processing industry

Bamboo

Bamboo is a local forest product used mainly for handcrafts production at village level for local markets and for floor production at an industrial scale for export markets According to MARD, the harvesting of bamboo reached 55,000 trees in 2011 and 58,000 trees by 2012 The estimated cultivation area of bamboo in Vietnam is 800,000 hectares of plantations with an average annual yield of 10 to 13 tones per hectares and 600,000 hectares of mixed forest, comprised of up to 70% bamboo

3 numbers are slightly different than in the text above due to the use of different sources, and there are a lot of different

numbers, in the different sources

Bamboo utilization is focused on three major subsectors in the south; value added processing (20% for pressed flooring), bulk processing (80% homeware, chopsticks and handicrafts), construction material (wattles) and emerging bamboo shoots sector at local level Presently the demand for bamboo in Vietnam is larger than supply Bamboo production faces land pressure issues due to the diverse demand for other forest species and forest protection enforcements (SNV, 2012)

2.3 Wood Processing Sector Demands and Status

Timber and forest products have experienced rapid growth in terms of value in Vietnam, the sector’s has great contribution to the national economy, and Vietnam is the fourth largest exporter of wood products and its timber industry (CIFOR, 2012), more recent newspaper articles indicate even the second largest after China (Vietnam.vn, 2013) The General Department of Forestry says the wood processing industry grew at an annual rate of 41–42%

in the 2005–2010 period, and 20–30% in the last three years The main wood products include rough products (sawn wood, plywood panel, composite panel), refined products (wooden board, wooden beds, etc), and handicraft or artisan products – nevertheless the competitive woodchip market is competing directly with the demand for wood

In 2011, the total volume of timber wood processing industry serves some 16 million m3 of logs, of which 7 million m3was used for chips and paper production, 3 million m3 was used for the domestic market (processing facilities and furniture) and 6 million m3 for export markets (Forest trend 2013) The wood materials for the wood processing industry tend to increase every year

Wood from plantation forest in Vietnam is is medium and small sized and therefore not suitable (in general) for the furniture industry and typically used as material for processing paper, manufacturing artificial wood board (planks, boards chips, fiber plywood) It is estimated that about 63% is being processed to chips and the remaining 37% goes directly to the pulp and paper sector, artificial boards, (small amounts to) furniture production and construction (VNFOREST 2012)

The raw timber from plantations and natural forests in the country for the wood processing industry is limited, reaching 12,3 million m3 round wood/yr Each year Vietnam has to import about 4 million m3 of logs to serve furniture manufacturers, accounting for approximately 70-80% of wood materials in the furniture industry (Forest trend, 2013)(CIFOR, 2012) Raw materials are mainly imported from other countries such as Laos, the U.S., China, Malaysia, Thai Land, Cambodia The amount of wood materials imported into Vietnam increased from 1 million m3 in 2003 to about 4 million m3 of logs in 2008-2009 The imported wood material is mainly sawn timber which account for 55%; 15% is round wood and remaining 30% is MDF and different type of plywood

According to MARD’s forecast, the sawn wood demand for wood processing industry in Vietnam in 2020 will increase to 7 million m3, equivalent to 15 million m3 of round wood, and Vietnam still has to import raw materials timber till 2020

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F IGURE 6: T HE SAWN WOOD DEMAND FOR FURNITURE PRODUCTION IN V IETNAM ( SOURCE MARD)

The domestic wood production during 2001–2009 increased by only 5.9%, whereas imports increased by 18% in the same period Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy 2006 – 2020 aims to reduce dependence on international imported timbers (from 80% to 20%) by 2020 by expanding the area of plantations, developing domestic forest reserves to replace imports, certifying 30% of national production forests and developing and upgrading the export processing industry (CIFOR, 2013)

T ABLE 4: F ORECAST FOR V IETNAM ’ S TIMBER DEMAND (MARD, 2006)

Domestic consumption and export timber 7,420 14,004 18,620 22,160

Small wood used for producing particle board

2.4 Woody biomass development plans

The forest and forestry objectives for 2020 given in the Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy to 2020 are focusing on the following:

To establish, manage, protect, develop and use 16.24 million ha of land planned for forestry and to increase forest cover to 47% by 2020 Growth in the value of forest production (including forest product processing and environment services) is targeted at between 3.5% and 4% per year, this goes hand in hand with a GDP from forestry growth, with a goal of 2-3%

of GDP

To manage, protect, develop and sustainably use 8.4 million ha of production forest — including 4.15 million ha of plantation forest, 3.63 million ha of natural production forest and 0.62 million ha of rehabilitating natural forest for agro-forestry — 5.68 million ha of protection forest and 2.16 million ha of special use forest

Conduct reforestation after harvest of 0.3 million ha per year, plant 200 million scattered tree per year While afforesting 1.5 million ha in the period of 2010-2020 and harvesting around 20-

24 million m3/year (of which 10 million m3 are big timber), to meet the material demands from the forest product processing and pulp industry, and for export.This export of forest products

is expected to reach US$7.8 billion (US$7 billion of timber products and US$0.8 billion of NWFPs) With the current growth rate of export of forest product at around 20%/year

Fuel-wood harvest for the rural area to amount to 25÷26 million m3/year However, forecasts fuel-wood demand to reach 10.24 million tones by 2020 (FAO, 2009)

Increase in income from forest environmental values through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), eco-tourism and water resource protection will reach US$2 billion by 2020

3 ENERGY POTENTIAL AND USAGE OF WOOD RESIDUES

The woody biomass residues can be divided groups of products, as show below:

1) Forest residues, often left in the forest – as currently it is often not economically feasible to transport them out of the forest This includes stumps, branches, leaves and bark

2) Saw mill residues & 3) wood processing industry - this could include bark, woodchips, sawdust and wood shavings and/or odd-sized chunks

Besides the above more obvious residues there are also the bamboo residues produced during processing ranging from 50% to 70% of the total bamboo processed (SNV 2012) The waste material from bamboo processing is used for making briquette charcoal, such as bamboo shavings, bamboo particle, bamboo ends, and bamboo sticks in different length

The heating value of woody biomass has relatively little variation, it depends on the composition of the wood Energy content is proportional to the dry-weight of wood; so higher density woods have higher calorific values In general, softwoods have higher heating values than hardwoods and branches have a higher heating value than bark Moisture content also affects the potential heating value, the drier the fuel, the higher the heating value Some indicators of the compositions are given in the table below, this are just for indication

T ABLE 5: H EATING V ALUES FOR SEVERAL TYPES OF W OODY B IOMASS (R ESIDUES )

(E NERGY BASIC , FACT SHEET 5.8)

(%)

Net heating value (MJ/kg)

Net heating value (Kcal/kg)

(%) (ECN, 2014)

Volatile (%)

Fixed carbon (%)

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The moisture content plays a crucial role in determining the calorific value The moisture content of wood is around 50 % (of total weight) when first harvested, whereas air-dried wood contains between 12% to 20% of moisture yielding a calorific value between 14 MJ/kg and 16 MJ/kg The depicts the influence that wood moisture has on calorific value is given in table below

T ABLE 6: I NFLUENCE OF WOOD MOISTURE ON CALORIFIC VALUE (E NERGY P EDIA , 2014)

Wood residues can be used as energy or input materials for other energy products type such

as wood pellet, charcoal In which, sawdust is mostly used as feedstock for pellet production because of its small size (it doesn’t required additional preprocessing like crushing) Meanwhile the branches and other big wood waste collected from forest are used for charcoal production or firewood The bark waste is not widely used as fuel in industry because of its low volatile content Moreover, bark is bulky waste that is not effective in transportation Bark waste normally collected by local people and used for cooking purposes

The sources of wood residues include both forests and non-forest lands Forests include natural forests, plantation forests, other woodlands including shrub lands Non-forest lands can include village woodlots and small tree farms, agro-forestry systems, home gardens, crop lands, and scattered and line trees on roads, rivers, canals and areas considered as wastelands

Vietnam has enormous potential for fuel-wood development and scientists have estimated that natural forests are likely to provide about 41 million tones of fuel-wood/year, plantation forest 1-2 million tones/year and scattered trees 8-10 million tones/year with a total of 70 ÷ 80 million tones per year (26 ÷ 28 million TOE)

3.1 Forest management – residues and potentials

Forest residues consist of everything that is not taken from the forest when the logs are taken out, the rate of materials taken out of the forest depends on the diameter and quality of the log Of the log input, the main forms of waste are log ends and trims (7%), bark (5%), log cores (10%), green veneer waste (12%), dry veneer waste (8%), trimmings (4%) and rejected plywood (1%) (FAO, 1990)

Recovery rates vary considerable depending on local conditions and on the type of forest it can be anywhere between 40% and 60% The ratio 50/50 is often found in the literature e.g for every cubic meter of log removed, a cubic meter of waste remains in the forest In case logging is carried out for export purposes, values can go up to 2 cubic meter of residues for every cubic meter of log extracted

In Vietnam, most of the wood residues are left in the forest to rot, in particular in sparsely populated areas where demand for wood fuels is low In some cases the residues are converted into charcoal or the local people living nearby the forest come and collect the fuel-wood for their cooking purposes For Vietnam the assumption based on literature has been made that about 60% of the materials taken from the forest is utilized and about 40% stays behind

Estimated amount of residues from logging is 2.2 million tones (2009), based on a wood yield

of 40% from logging (FAO, 1997) In 2010, 4.7 million tones of logged wood processed (0.7 tone/ m3) There is a considerable recovery of logging residues through collection or production of wood chips for industrial use, or by collection by households for domestic purposes Bigger residues are converted into charcoal, which is then sold to the industrial sector

It is estimated in the same report that the distances in which fuel-wood transport is still economically viable is around 100 km (this is estimated at around 50km in Europe), this implies that fuel-wood may be available in interior and mountain regions and mainly serve the needs of local communities as residential fuel-wood The difficulty in using residues from logging is that the transportation cost is relative high compared with the selling price due to the fact that you are transporting a lot of water and air instead of heating value

Based on the wood yield of 40% from logging, as the timber demand forecast given in Table 8 (section 2.3), the volume of wood waste drived from logging is calculated in the same table The residues from logging is mainly wet wood that applying the heat value of wet wood of 10.9 MJ/kg, wood residues from logging in the year of 2003 – 2020 would generate a potential energy source as in table below This is the potential before the actual conversion of the residue into energy, for example when converting it in standard boilers another 10-20% loss of energy value will take place, when further converted into electricity more losses will occur All potentials shown in the next few paragraphs are the theoretical potentials Also the potential is based on the heating values with 40-50% moisture content through natural (sun) drying and the density of wood applied 0.7 tone/m3

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T ABLE 8: F ORECASTED ENERGY POTENTIAL GENERATED FROM WOOD LOGGING RESIDUES 4

One source (Yoshida, Suzuki, 2010) giving figures on the collection of forest residues from rubber plantations after cutting (tops or branches) in Cambodia (about 30% of the cut volume) can be done relatively affordable, the cost price is around US $5–7/ m3, including the transportation cost to the customer The residues in this case are used as fuel for kilns at neighboring brick factories Another example from the same article but for Malaysia gives examples of cost prices for collection between 16 and 20 USD per m3, where the selling price

is as low as 3 to 5 USD/ m3

Scattered trees are the small uneconomical trees left behind with the logging residues It is estimated there is more than 200 million scattered trees per year in Vietnam, equivalent to 100,000 hectare of plantations (VNFOREST, 2011) A fuel wood yield of 0.4-0.5 tone/ha/year is expected, therefore, the fuel wood potential is about 50,000 tones per year (FSIV, 2009) Collection of these scattered trees and other forest residues can only be done based on sustainable forest management planning (to make sure sufficient material stays behind, for nutritious and biodiversity reasons) In 2005, some 3.45 billion scattered trees were planted, which is equivalent to 3.45 million ha planted at the density of 1,000 per ha Scattered trees produced 6.04 million tones of fuel wood in 2005 In the period 2006-2020, about 200 million trees are planned to be planted every year As a result, the amount of fuel wood to be harvested by 2010 was expected to reach 7.79 million tones

3.2 Estimations of the available residues from the industrial sector

The Green Growth Forestry Strategy of Vietnam stimulates the (1) the use of sustainable raw material, (2) the use of wood waste for energy production and (3) the development of sustainable product The use of wood waste (or residues) of the processing and forestry sector could be for the products as written in Chapter 2.4

Currently in Vietnam the industry is not using the full potential of wood residues It is reported that 20% of the wood remaining (branches etc.) after harvest is collected and

4

To simplify the calculation, the same heating value is used for all residues (the 40%), therefore it is slightly over estimated.

traded/used by local people and/or the processors An estimated 30% of biomass by-products

or waste is used for energy production, which means that the utilization of waste materials for energy purposes is really small (Worner, 2012) An overview given by the same source give a clear indication of the opportunities (a mass balance for wood processing industry)

F IGURE 7: T HE BALANCE MATERIAL AND ENERGY USED IN WOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRY IN V IETNAM

(W ORNER , 2012)

It is given the figure that 100% of round wood will generate 45% of wood waste in sawing section, that include about 62% of slap shapes and 38% of sawdust at high moisture content The 55% of sawn timber goes into drying section and ready for the processing section The wood waste from sawing section will be reused about 20% for particle boards, fiber board production and others; 30% will be utilized as fuel-wood for drying section and the remaining 50% will be sold to the market for multi-use purposes (for fuel for other industries, paper production, packing material etc.)

The energy potential from wood waste in this chapter will be calculated based on the forecasts for demand of Vietnam’s timber and forest product that has been issued by MARD (2006), based on the emerging growth in demand for timber (see also more in Chapter 2.3)

Saw mills – residues and potentials

Wood sawmills play an important intermediary role in wood processing industry that connecting the raw material harvesting from forestry to the furniture manufacturing In the ongoing developments in the wood processing industry, many sawmill have appeared country wide like for example in Ha Tinh (300 workshops), Quang Nam (717 workshops), Quang Binh (384 workshops), Yen Bai (230 workshops) and Phu Tho (400 workshops) In addition, many sawmills are not registered in the official statistics of Vietnam like additional ones in Quang Binh, Kon Tum, Dak Lak, Nghe An etc The capacity of these sawmills ranging from 300 m3 to

Sawing section

20% reuse

Final product Wood processing

Drying section

40%

product 100% input of sawn timber

100% dries sawn timber

100%

output 100% sawn timber input

55%

sawntimb er

60%

wood waste Firewood

15

2000 m3 round wood/year, provide sawn timber mainly for the domestic use (Forest trend 2011) Saw mills can either be directly connected to the processing plant, or can operate independently and feed into the processing plants

The wood residues from sawmill include on average 12% bark, while slabs, edgings and trimmings come up to a total 34% while sawdust is another 12% of the log input After kiln- drying the wood, further processing may take place resulting in another 8% waste (of log input) in the form of sawdust and trim end (2%) and planer shavings (6%) For calculation purposes a yield factor of 50% has been used of wood entering the sawmilling process (38% solid wood waste and 12% sawdust).In 2010, the amount of wood residues from saw milling was estimated about 2.35 million tones and the price of sawdust was about 250 – 400 VND/kg (Forest Trend 2013)

In large sawmills these wood residues are typically used for providing process heat for timber drying purposes, whereas the waste from small mills is typically used locally for domestic cooking or collected for other purposes like energy for brick or lime factories, small industrial application and/or as a source for parquet making (see also the chapter on pellets, Chapter4.2) Some facilities additionally utilize sawdust by mixing with binding material to produce particleboard (Quyen, 2006) In some cases sawdust is used for insect repellent making Sawdust sometimes is briquetted and carbonised and sold as a high-grade charcoal, which commands a higher price than normal charcoal Considerable quantities are also used to cover charcoal mound kilns

The energy potential of residues from saw mills is large The wood residues as indicated above are woodchip (shavings), slap wood (62%) and sawdust (32%) which totally account for 45% of input material (Figure 7) Stationary mill chippers are often used to screen and re-chip some of the residues to make the product more uniform in size and quality A good quality mill chip is considered a high-grade product, both for combustion systems and as a feedstock for paper mills, particle boards, fiber board manufacture

The energy potential from wood waste generated during sawing section will be calculated based on the annual timber demand and assuming waste generation ratios of slap wood and sawdust and its heat value given above As the sawing section is before the drying section, the wood residues from sawmills still contain a high moisture content

T ABLE 9: F ORECASTED RESIDUE TO ENERGY POTENTIAL IN SAWING SECTION

Energy potential of slap wood waste TJ 15,795 29,811 39,637 47,173

The residues in the sawing section will be utilized for timber drying section and therefore 50% will already be used within the process, the other 50% can be sold or utilized otherwise (current destinations for this are unknown) Sawmills in remote areas have difficulties with transporting the wood residues and are therefore the wood residues are normally (when not fully collected by local people).

Wood processing industry – residues and potentials

In the wood processing sector, the rate of wood residue depends very much on the processing technology, the type of input material and the type of products that are made However, due to the old fashion techniques used in Vietnam it is known that only a small volume of wood material is utilized as final product by the wood manufactures, about 40% of the timber (Figure 7) Therefore, wood waste volume is large (about 60% of input material) Woodchips after wood processing is various in sizes and types Therefore, it requires separation for treatment and processing, something that not all factories are willing to do Nevertheless homogeneous waste products have higher market prices When the woodchips are sorted they can be used to make particle boards, fiber boards (MDF) and wood-wool – it could also be used to fuel to processes if heat is required in the wood processing industry itself (drying - mainly in the large industries)

The usage of the residues from this sector are very similar to the usage of the residues from the sawmill sector Large amounts of residues are also sold to (nearby) households for cooking purposes, with the rising living standard the demand reduces over the years Instead of using these wood chips, people use long wood pieces for burning because of its convenience in transportation and combustion, and because it requires less attention during cooking tasks Wood chips from large scale factories, are often being recycled and used for producing particle boards, fiber boards, or used for energy purposes for wood drying (ENERTEAM, 2012)

T ABLE 10: R ESIDUES FROM W OOD PROCESSING (IE, 2011)

tones in 2010)

Building (timber formwork and house repairs) 0.80

The wood residues from wood processing industry have been calculated based on the volume

of timber consumed and the ratios of residues generated during processing with sawdust (10% wood material) and woodchip (50% wood material) as totally of 60% and its heat values (GiZ, 2011)

In 2010, about 16 million m3 was processed to produce 6.5 million m3 of sawn wood, the wood residues was calculated to be 9.5 million m3, equivalent to 6.7 million tones (including 5.58 million tones of wood waste and 1.12 million tones of sawdust)